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Washington Examiner, by Joel Gehrke Posted By: KarenJ1- Thu, 23 17 2013 06:17:30 GMT Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told Congress that President Obama’s administration is “overachieving on deficit reduction,” as he defended the president for submitting a budget that never balances. “If anything, we are overachieving on deficit reduction right now, given where we are in terms of the current year and immediate economic needs,” Lew told Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R'Ind., while testifying Wednesday before the House Financial Services Committee. “So, the goal, you know, should not be to balance the budget right now.” Lew then confirmed that budget policymakers should plan to raise taxes.

Washington Examiner, by Joel Gehrke Posted By: KarenJ1- Thu, 23 09 2013 06:09:20 GMT Freshman Sen. Ted Cruz, R'Texas, suggested to Sen. John McCain, R'Ariz., that he no longer represents the majority of Senate Republicans on the issue of increasing the debt ceiling — and he offered a bet to prove it. “There may be more ‘wacko birds’ in the Senate than is suspected,” Cruz said on the Senate floor, recalling the name that McCain once applied Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul, R'Ky., after their talking filibuster against President Obama’s drone policy. To test the hypothesis, Cruz suggested that McCain circulate a letter to the GOP

Chicago Tribune, by Editorial Posted By: garnet- Thu, 23 06 2013 06:06:30 GMT "If you refuse to answer, you will leave us no choice but to ask for a special counsel or the appointment of a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of this. I hope that´s not the approach of the IRS going forward, because there will be hell to pay." — U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, D'Mass., to IRS officials appearing Wednesday before a House investigative committee. "I have not done anything wrong. ... I will not answer any questions or testify about the subject matter." — Lois Lerner, director of the IRS´s tax'exempt organizations division,

CNBC, by Katie Holliday Posted By: JoniTx- Thu, 23 03 2013 06:03:01 GMT Europe´s largest economy Germany, which has been criticized for not doing enough to help struggling euro zone countries, has topped a poll as the world´s most popular country. The survey carried out for the BBC, polled 26,000 people in 25 countries, and asked them to rate 16 countries and the European Union, as a whole, on whether their influence on the world was mainly positive or negative. Germany came out on top, with 59 percent of the survey´s participants awarding it a positive rating. The country moved up three percentage points from its 2012 position.

United Press International, by Peter Morici Posted By: JoniTx- Thu, 23 57 2013 05:57:34 GMT COLLEGE PARK, Md' In the Internal Revenue Service targeting scandal and others, Washington and the media are obsessed with the question: What did the president know and when did he know it? That misses the point. Barack Obama´s presidency is much more damaging to the nation than the mistakes of subordinates now coming to light. Most recently, we learned Obama met with anti'Tea Party IRS Union President Colleen Kelley just before the tax agency began targeting conservative groups. Is that the smoking gun? Was the president in on the plan to harass opponents of big government?

Associated Press, by Stephen Ohlemacher Posted By: JoniTx- Thu, 23 51 2013 05:51:29 GMT WASHINGTON ' Three days of congressional hearings about the Internal Revenue Service´s targeting of conservative political groups have lawmakers looking for ways to widen an investigation that has so far been largely contained within the tax collection agency. More than 11 hours of testimony and an inspector general´s report have revealed plenty of wrongdoing within the IRS. But so far, investigators have not produced evidence that anyone outside the IRS authorized the targeting, or even knew about it before a few weeks ago. They will keep trying. Three congressional committees are investigating the matter, and the leaders of those committees

Cybercast News Service, by Shannon Quick Posted By: KarenJ1- Thu, 23 49 2013 05:49:24 GMT A bipartisan group of House members introduced legislation on Wednesday to protect journalists from government snooping. “Freedom of the press is a foundational freedom upon which all of our other freedoms and liberties are based and protected,” said Rep. John Conyers (D'Mich.). The Free Flow of Information Act, H.R. 1962, would protect reporters by preventing the government from compelling the disclosure of their source material, except under certain exceptions that must go through judicial review. Those exceptions include cases where it is necessary to prevent an act of terrorism, imminent death, or other harm to national security.

American Thinker, by Rick Moran Posted By: JoniTx- Thu, 23 45 2013 05:45:03 GMT A Wall Street Journal editorial socks it to the president and his hands'off management style. Every day brings new revelations about who knew what about the IRS targeting conservative groups during President Obama´s re'election campaign, but the overall impression is of a vast federal bureaucracy run amok. While the White House continues to peddle the story of a driverless train wreck, taxpayers are being treated to a demonstration of the dangers of an unwieldy and unaccountable administrative state. Look, Ma, no hands! In his press events, Mr. Obama has said that while he learned about the Cincinnati rogues

Cybercast News Service, by J. Matt Barber Posted By: KarenJ1- Thu, 23 43 2013 05:43:22 GMT Under President Obama, "justice" is anything but blind. Neither is it deaf. In fact, based on recent revelations, it appears to be watching your every move and listening to your every word. Still, if you happen to be a federal employee, now it´s even listening for your silence. The only thing this Obama White House seems to generate is scandal. Well, here´s yet another to add to the growing list. In addition to the Benghazi cover'up, IRS targeting of political dissenters and the illegal seizure of media phone records, whistleblowers within DOJ have contacted Liberty Counsel

Cybercast News Service, by Fred Lucas Posted By: KarenJ1- Thu, 23 26 2013 05:26:45 GMT President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met with three people at the White House Tuesday who are in the country illegally but received “deferred action” that allowed them to stay in the country under a memorandum issued by administration unilaterally last June in a memorandum issued by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. In all, Obama and Biden met with eight people advocating for comprehensive immigration reform on Tuesday, according to White House readout of the meeting. The White House readout of the meeting listed three of those as having received “deferred action.”

Weekly Standard, by Daniel Halper Posted By: KarenJ1- Thu, 23 19 2013 05:19:07 GMT This morning on a radio show, New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner admitted that more lewd photos could come out: “It is what it is,” Weiner told the radio host in his first live interview since announcing his mayoral bid. “People may decide they want to come forward and say, here’s another email that I got or another photo. I’m certainly not going to do that. So people may hear things that are true, they may hear things that are not true, but I’m going to try to keep being focused on issues that are important to

Washington Times, by Catherine Poe Posted By: KarenJ1- Thu, 23 11 2013 05:11:16 GMT WASHINGTON — The Tea Party wants former Alaska governor Sarah Palin to join their favorites in the Senate, Ted Cruz (R'Texas) and Rand Paul (R'Ky.). They say she can win and they have a poll to prove it. Yikes, is America ready for a Senator Palin? The Tea Party Leadership Fun commissioned a Harper Poll that shows Sarah Palin leads the Republican field in Alaska for the upcoming Senate seat. It is only by 2 points (32 to 30%), but that is without her even saying she is interested. Not that Democrat Sen. Mark Begich is planning

Daily Caller, by Alex Pappas Posted By: ragu- Thu, 23 03 2013 05:03:15 GMT WASHINGTON — While momentum has been building inside the House Republican conference for a special congressional committee to investigate last year’s terrorist attacks in Benghazi, the GOP leadership is making it clear they still have no enthusiasm for establishing such a committee. About two-thirds of House Republicans – 153 in total – have signed on to the resolution offered by Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia to establish “a select committee to investigate and report on the attack on the United States consulate in Benghazi, Libya.”“I think there’s a lot of frustration up here among members

Reuters, by Kim Dixon Posted By: KarenJ1- Thu, 23 56 2013 04:56:48 GMT WASHINGTON ' Republican Representative Darrell Issa said on Thursday he will call Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner back to testify before his committee on the IRS'Tea Party scandal after she asserted her constitutional right not to answer questions. "We are obligated to bring Lerner back because she did not properly take the Fifth (Amendment)," Issa said. "She clearly chose to make her statements and then not open herself up to even any questioning as to the statement she made," said Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

New York Daily News, by Adam Edelman Posted By: JoniTx- Thu, 23 52 2013 04:52:00 GMT It could have been a match made in tax haven. A young Michelle Obama once dated the inspector general who recently uncovered the IRS scandal, according to a bombshell report.The future First Lady, then known as Michelle Robinson, reportedly dated J. Russell George, the current IRS top watchdog responsible for investigating the widening trouble at the tax agency, while the two were at Harvard Law School in the 1980s, the National Journal reported.The power pair were both members of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) and graduated together in 1988, and at the very least, shared a few

Washington Examiner, by Paul Bedard Posted By: KarenJ1- Thu, 23 45 2013 04:45:27 GMT The growing IRS-Tea Party scandal, which has robbed Democrats of the so-called "trust edge" they held over Republicans, is now jeopardizing the Democratic majority in the Senate and even hopes that Hillary Clinton will replace President Obama in 2016. "This hurts the Democratic Party and will hurt anybody who runs for president in 2016," said former Clinton White House counsel Lanny Davis, a major supporter of Hillary Clinton. Speaking on national radio´s Andrea Tantaros Show, he added that if the the White House had prior knowledge of the IRS scandal,

Reuters, by Guy Faulconbridge & Michael Holden Posted By: JoniTx- Thu, 23 38 2013 04:38:48 GMT LONDON' Two British men of Nigerian descent accused of hacking a soldier to death on a London street in revenge for wars in Muslim countries were known to security services, a source close to the investigation said Thursday. One man, filmed calmly justifying the killing as he stood by the body holding a knife and meat cleaver in bloodied hands, was named by acquaintances as 28'year'old Londoner Michael Adebolajo ' a British'born convert to radical Islam. So frenzied was the attack, some witnesses thought they tried to behead the victim.

Cincinatti/Gannett Media, by James Pilcher Posted By: drive- Thu, 23 30 2013 04:30:55 GMT New emails between Internal Revenue Service officials released Wednesday as part of congressional testimony give a better view of who knew of the screening of conservative tea party groups and the search terms being used, and when they knew it. The documents also show a bit of the process the IRS used in such situations, but do not answer the question at the heart of the controversy – who made the decision to search for such groups and why. The string of emails is from early June 2011, sparked by a request from Holly Paz,

Washington Examiner, by Conn Carroll Posted By: KarenJ1- Thu, 23 30 2013 04:30:26 GMT UnitedHealth, the nation’s largest private insurer, will not participate in California’s Obamacare health exchange, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday. Health insurance giants Aetna and Cigna will also opt out of Covered California, the state agency charged with implementing Obamacare. All three insurers will still provide health insurance through large employers in the state. Kaiser Permanente, the largest health insurer in California, will work with Covered California, as will Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of California. Together, these two companies already control 87 percent of the state’s individual health insurance market.

Washington Times, by Jennifer Harper Posted By: KarenJ1- Thu, 23 25 2013 04:25:10 GMT "As each day passes, Americans find ourselves with more questions about the IRS targeting of conservative groups and donors ' and what the White House and Treasury Department knew and when,” says Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who has asked in'house attorney Jonathan Waclawski to file a Freedom of Information Act request with the IRS to get to the bottom of things. The request has been sent, asking for correspondence between IRS employees and officials, dating from Jan. 1, 2010, through Monday. The agency has 20 days to respond. In his request,